James Black
Composer, performer, artistic director
“With James Black, you encounter a universe of real madness where 'everything goes'. Where DIY video, hopeless choreographed performances, and accurately notated score music – among many other things – in a deliberately unsightly mix make up the work. The impossible is a deliberate dogma resulting in a unified expression, which is chaotic and almost gallows humorous, but where one senses a composer who ultimately has complete control over the final result. They are extremely consistent in what they have set out to do, and perhaps that is why you never doubt that it is James Black and not any other composer you are dealing with.”
Danish Arts Council, 2020
"Wonderful and absurd, somewhere between Samuel Beckett and Mauricio Kagel"
Politiken, 2018
"First and foremost James Black is a great composer. The are creative and dare to leap into curious things - you are never bored listening to their works"
Pelle-prize motivation, 2018
"James Black, if you had to describe in them one word, is a muscular composer. There is elementary power in their work"
Politiken, 2017
"A mix of Kodaly's solfege-system and the Village People...Riveting, disturbing, and fascinating - something quite different from most things"
Ballade.no, 2018
"The whole piece moves in a space that no longer needs distinctions between tonal or atonal, composition or live-performance, pop or experimental music, but moves incessantly in all conceivable directions"
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 2017
"They cast themselves out, standing almost naked onstage. Puts themselves at risk and takes the greatest chances, because as well as being a talented composer, they are a brave and reckless performer with an immediate, natural and strong stage presence"
Pelle-prize motivation, 2018
"It was funny - and it was sad. Has this performer-composer lost their mind? Or have they composed what it meant to have had a brain injury?"
Politiken, 2017
"Pure and simple melody, sadness-saturated beauty"
Politiken, 2019
"Painfully honest"
Amfion.fi, 2016
"Crazy, but also momentarily mournful...a new world"
Seismograf, 2019